Monthly Archives: June 2012

Rehearsed readings of winning scripts from the R.E. Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards. The boy out of the country by Felix Nobis -Monday 19 November at 7.30pm The play revolves around the sale of a country property to accommodate…

Recipient of The R E Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Award 2009, Rhonda Is In Therapy by Bridgette Burton is a new Australian work that explores the themes of loss and grief. After an unimaginable accident, Rhonda takes flight from…

The Victorian chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects thought so too. That’s why, this year, the 236 entries for its annual architecture awards will be displayed in an innovative exhibition designed by Monash University students and aimed at luring a broad audience, beyond the architects-only viewers of A2 boards on a wall.

Jim McNeil was an armed robber, a violent ex-prisoner – and one of the most important playwrights Australia has ever seen.

Sentenced to 17 years in prison after shooting a police officer in the late 1960s, McNeil began writing plays for the amusement of fellow inmates.

Now almost 40 years after he was released from Bathurst Correctional Complex, two of his most influential plays, The Chocolate Frog and The Old Familiar Juice, will be performed in his home city of Melbourne.

THE Melbourne media christened Jim McNeil the laughing bandit because he was often amused at how easy it was to hold up a TAB or pub at gunpoint.

The serial offender would chuckle to himself, even as he was carrying out his weapon and a bag of loot.

McNeil was many things: armed robber and cop shooter; husband, wife basher and father; raconteur, recidivist and violent alcoholic; underage lover of a brothel madam, prison homosexual and charismatic womaniser. He was an unlikely arts sensation, but that’s precisely what he became after he started writing plays behind the high sandstone walls of Sydney’s Parramatta jail in the early 1970s.

THE Melbourne media christened Jim McNeil the laughing bandit because he was often amused at how easy it was to hold up a TAB or pub at gunpoint.

The serial offender would chuckle to himself, even as he was carrying out his weapon and a bag of loot.

McNeil was many things: armed robber and cop shooter; husband, wife basher and father; raconteur, recidivist and violent alcoholic; underage lover of a brothel madam, prison homosexual and charismatic womaniser. He was an unlikely arts sensation, but that’s precisely what he became after he started writing plays behind the high sandstone walls of Sydney’s Parramatta jail in the early 1970s.

The Marvelous Wonderettes takes you to the 1958 Springfield High School Super Senior Prom where we meet the Wonderettes, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts! As we learn about their lives and loves, we…

From the talent behind sell-out success Urban Display Suite - prepare for Mademoiselle. Michael Dalley and Paul McCarthy are overdressing and overacting as they storm into fortyfivedownstairs for a champagne cocktail of wit with an extra dash of bitters! A…

…I spent my Sunday evening with the good women of the Burlesque Hour: Glory Box at fortyfivedownstairs. Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith have built a loyal audience over the years of presenting the Burlesque Hour, and so the long queue outside the venue should not have been a surprise: I can’t think of a better way to spend a gloomy winter evening in Melbourne. Hilarious, witty, erotic, liberating and beautiful, they put the “adult” into adult entertainment. I have sometimes thought that anyone who claims – as is said with monotonous regularity in comment threads on the web – that feminists are humourless, sexless misandrists should be forced to watch a Finucane and Smith show. But they don’t deserve to have so much fun.

Finucane & Smith’s GLORY BOX is the latest incarnation of The Burlesque Hour, the Australian cabaret that has gone on to redefine – defy even – the genre around the world.

Sexy, twisted, and at times very moving, I find myself requiring multiple adjectives to capture the essence of this show. I could add funny, confronting and slightly un-hinged, and I’d still only describe a portion of what happens when this GLORY BOX is opened.

In an underground salon of red lanterns and intimate tables, co-creator Moira Finucane’s opening act sets the tone as she devours an apple so ferociously that I might still be removing pieces from my hair. For the uninitiated this might be the moment where any expectation of a traditional burlesque experience is also demolished. And from here the delights unfold!

Follow the fairy-lit stairwell down and you come to the basement theatre of fortyfivedownstairs, tonight outlandish with scarlet oriental lamps and sumptuous drapes. The staff are glamorous, the crowd fervent with anticipation. This evening this room will be the court of Melbourne’s queen of burlesque, Moira Finucane.

Burlesque gets a bad rap sometimes because let’s face it – the majority of performance these days is unimaginative strip tease. Enter The Burlesque Hour, Finucane and Smith’s rotating ragtag troupe of circus performers, cabaret and performance artists. This is what burlesque should be – performance art that’s challenging, provocative, satirical and at times deeply discomforting.

MEDIA RELEASE Prestigious art prize honours refugee artists AMES and Multicultural Arts Victoria are excited to announce the 12 winners of the Heartlands Refugee Fine Art Prize, who were honoured at a special exhibition opening at fortyfivedownstairs in Flinders Lane…

Bridget McCormack The Australian 31/05/2012 CHRISTOS Tsiolkas has lent his pen to cabaret doyenne Moira Finucane for her latest show, The Glory Box. The author of The Slap wrote a five-minute piece about the Garden of Eden on the condition…